ONCE WE GET HOME, I volunteer to go pick up Desmond at improv class. On the way there, I stop to pick up a big soft pretzel and I put mustard over the whole thing, just like Desmond likes it.
I can’t wait to see him, and hear about his day with Simon Yee. I’ll bet it was much better, now that there’s no lunch bag to worry about!
Improv class is in the basement of his school, but when I get there I don’t see Desmond in the group of kids, who have, apparently, turned themselves into a living machine. They are pumping their arms and twisting their bodies, and making whirs and clangs and gongs, and it looks like fun, but Desmond is sitting by himself with his back against the wall, not even looking at the other kids. The teacher, Ms. Taymor, waves at me enthusiastically, and then points to Desmond and shakes her head, then makes some intricate hand gestures that seem to mean I don’t know what’s wrong, so I walk over to him and sit down beside him on the floor.
“What happened?” I whisper, looking up and down his arms for bruises. “Did Simon—”
“Simon didn’t say anything to me today,” Desmond says. “Not a word.”
“Well—that’s great.” I hand him the big, fat pretzel, and he smiles a little.
“You’re so nice to me, Callie.” His eyes fill with tears, and I just want to hug him. He takes a bite of the pretzel.
The group in front is still whirring and gonging, and Ms. Taymor shakes her black curls and shouts, “Take it to a TEN!” and the whirring and gonging gets louder and crazier.
Desmond just chews his pretzel and I can tell that he is not even seeing this crazy machine in front of us.
“If Simon left you alone then why are you—”
“He left me alone, but he started picking on Zephyr. He said he was a fat dummy.”
“What?” Now I’m mad. Zephyr is basically the nicest kid in the world. Okay, second nicest. “Zephyr’s barely even chubby! Why would he do that?”
“Take it to a ONE!” Ms. Taymor shouts, and the machine quiets down, and the movements get smaller.
The room has grown almost silent, so Desmond whispers, “Because Simon Yee is a rampallian.”
“Desmond, I’m sure he’s a mammal.”
“That means a horrible person, Callie.”
“Oh. Well at least he’s not bothering you—”
“What difference does it make? It bothers me when my friends get picked on,” Desmond says, and the words hit me like a slap.
Ms. Taymor waves her arm at the group, flapping the long, loose sleeve of her tunic. “Pause, everyone! Pause button! Pause!” Then she turns to me and Desmond. “Would you please—” She gestures wildly with her hands, somehow communicating that we should be quieter. “It’s so hard for the actors—”
“This is not a professional environment,” says one little girl with braids.
“Sorry, guys,” I announce to the group of seven- and eight-year-olds. “I think we’re going to—” And I gesture to Ms. Taymor to indicate that Desmond and I are leaving. I guess I’m just trying to communicate in her language. She nods and then gestures that she hopes Desmond feels better, and that maybe we should check his temperature to make sure he doesn’t have a fever, and then I nod, and she turns back to the machine and cries, “RESUME!” and it all starts back up again.
I grab Desmond’s backpack for him, since he’s busy with the pretzel, and we trudge up the stairs.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Desmond tells me in the stairwell. “Simon Yee is awful. It’s just how he is . . .”
“I really thought he would stop after you got rid of the lunch bag.”
Desmond sighs. “It’s not about the lunch bag,” he says.
“Well, maybe it’s a little about the lunch bag.”
Desmond looks at me, his dark eyes serious beneath his floppy bangs. “No,” he says simply. “It’s not.”
For some reason, I am still thinking about Desmond and Simon Yee and the lunch bag after dinner, when I am in my room, supposedly doing my history homework, ha, ha.
I am considering calling Min. But what would Min do? Freak out, maybe, and then try to get into a poorly spelled Twitter war with Simon Yee.
What about Zelda? She wouldn’t even understand why I’m butting into my brother’s problems. She has three older brothers, but they’re all either off at college or long out of it, and it’s basically like they live on a distant planet—one without phones to call home.
The person I want to call is Anna. Not just because Anna knows Desmond better than Min or Zelda do, but because I know Anna will say what I need someone to say. She will be mad. She will want revenge. Nobody messes with anybody around Anna. “Somebody needs to go to beat-down school,” she would say.
Look, I do not believe in physical violence. Of course, I also do not believe in Santa Claus, but that does not stop me from jumping out of bed on Christmas morning.
I am not saying that I am planning to beat up Simon Yee! I am only saying that I wish I knew someone who would do it for me. Except that I kind of want the satisfaction of dealing with Simon myself.
Because something is dawning on me. I feel like someone just set my hair on fire! Literally! Except not literally, because then my head would be on fire, but you know what I mean!
Desmond was right: it’s not about the lunch bag. It’s never about the lunch bag.
It’s about being a bully.
Even though I tried to help Desmond, I didn’t help him. I didn’t help him be Desmond—I tried to just tell him to act like someone else, to get a different lunch bag, to blend in, to pretend . . .
I thought I was Keeping It Positive! But, really, I just didn’t stick up for him. The same way I didn’t stick up for Anna.
I think about my dad, and how he stood up for his brother, even though it cost him. All he wanted was for Uncle Larry to be able to be himself.
I start dialing the phone before I realize what I’m doing. But, as usual, I have to leave a message. “Hey. Hey, Anna. You know, I’ve been thinking. About the pie party. My mom was kind of weird that day. I think it was basically temporary insanity. But she’s better now. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I should have stood up for you. I’m better now, too. I just, uh . . . I wanted you to know that. I miss you.”
I click off, and it is amazing how much better I feel. I feel relaxed, and calm. Like, maybe this is what meditation is supposed to feel like.
“Wow, this is so Zen,” I murmur. Just then, the phone buzzes in my hand and I am so surprised that I scream and throw it across the room.
When I scramble off my bed and pick the phone out of the garbage can it landed in, I see that the person calling is Anna. My heart freaks out, and for a moment, I consider throwing the phone away again. No. God! What is my problem? Anna is my friend! And she is finally calling back!
“Hello?”
“Hey—Callie. It’s Anna.”
“I know. I know! Hi!”
“Hi.”
“Hi!”
She laughs softly. “Hi. Again.”
“I’m so glad to hear from you!”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I haven’t called . . . I just got your message.” She blows out a breath, and I can imagine her bangs fluttering the way they do when she does that.
“Yeah . . .” Anna’s voice sounds different. She sounds cautious. This is the first time it really hits me that I hurt her feelings. The last time I saw Anna, we were saying good-bye on the pavement in front of my apartment building. She gave me this weak little hug and sort of looked behind me, to where the tiny blue lights glowed on a huge silver-and-teal holiday wreath, illuminating the white wall in the lobby. “Thanks for having me at your pie party,” she said.
“Thanks for coming.”
And then her dad pulled up in his van, and Ivan opened the door for Anna. She glanced at him, and said, “You sure are lucky, Callie.” The door closed, and the van pulled away.
I didn’t want her to leave.
“You were waiting for me to apologize,” I say now.
“I guess so. I guess . . . I thought you had changed.” She’s silent for a moment. “I’m glad the insanity was temporary.”
“Well—I didn’t say it was over.”
Anna laughs.
“So—so what’s going on?”
So Anna tells me all about what’s going on with our friends. How Leroy and Janelle were a couple for a while, and it almost broke Jannie’s heart because of course she’s had a crush on him since sixth grade. And how Minti wants everyone to use his real name—Mintesinot—now, but everyone keeps forgetting and calling him Minti. And how the science teacher got fired last month, and the substitute has a weird smell.
And I tell Anna about Desmond and Simon Yee, and of course she is furious on my brother’s behalf. It feels so good to have someone listen for a while. But it turns out that I don’t really need her help, after all. I already know what I’m going to do.
I’m going to walk my brother to school tomorrow morning.
By the time we get off the phone, it’s late, and I don’t feel like dealing with my history homework. But that’s okay, because I’m not going to school tomorrow, anyway. I’ll just call in another excuse and then make a fresh start on Monday.
My phone buzzes; it’s a text from Zelda: Are you coming tomorrow? and I cringe. Uggh. I don’t even dare to text her back. I don’t have her money. I can’t face her. I can’t deal with everything all at once.
But I can face Simon Yee.